Icy Clutches

by Aaron Elkins

  "You think there might be something thin and sharp in one of those drawers?” he asked. “A skewer, maybe?"

  Julie rummaged until she found a seafood fork with a narrow, probe-like end, and Gideon began to push gently at the clod.

  "Looks delicate,” Owen said.

  "Mm. It's damp, which doesn't help.” He continued to pick at the stubborn dirt. “You wouldn't happen to have some acetone at Bartlett Cove, would you?"

  "I think there might be some in the naturalists’ workroom. Smells like it, anyway."

  "Good. When we get back we can put this in a bath of it to drive the moisture out. And if there's some alvar or acrylic resin around I can make a preservative sealant for it tomorrow. The other bones too."

  "I don't know about acrylic resin,” Owen said.

  "Duco cement?"

  "Yeah, I think there's plenty of that."

  "Good enough."

  Owen watched for a while. “Any idea who it belongs to?"

  "Adult male,” Gideon said without raising his head. “Mid-to late twenties, fairly large...the same as everything else so far."

  "Does it go with the jaw they found yesterday, do you think?” Julie asked.

  "Impossible to say. If we had the whole jaw we could try fitting the condyle into the mandibular fossa here in the skull and see if they go together. But unfortunately we have the right side of the skull and the left side of the jaw. The only—"

  He stopped. A pea-sized gray pebble had dislodged itself from the clod. A few seconds later, with some additional prodding, the rest of the dirt fell away to reveal a roughly triangular hole about an inch wide. With painstaking care Gideon ran a finger slowly around the edge of the hole, stopping twice to explore particular features. Then he turned the fragment over and did the same thing on the other side. Five minutes passed.

  "What's with the hole?” Owen finally asked him.

  Julie laughed. “Don't bother, Owen. At times like this he's oblivious to everything. Completely impervious to human contact. You'll get used to it."

  Owen was silent a moment, then persisted. “But what's so interesting about a hole?” This time the question was addressed to Julie.

  "Um, if it's all the same, I think I'll let Gideon explain it to you."

  Gideon went to an adjustable table lamp at the far end of the counter. He held the fragment six inches from the bulb, and his face six inches from the fragment, tilting it so that the light slanted across the surface to highlight the texture. After another two minutes he straightened slowly up and came over to them with the fragment.

  "I was not impervious. I was simply focusing my powers of concentration.” He tapped the bone. “Got something funny here, folks."

  "Oh my,” Julie murmured and downed the rest of her toddy.

  "What do you mean, funny?” Owen asked. “What's going on? I mean, I know I'm just the chief park ranger here, but couldn't somebody tell me what's happening?"

  Gideon told him. “Whoever this was, he was murdered."

  "Murdered!” Owen stared at him. “But these people were killed in the avalanche. They—” He looked from Gideon to Julie and back again. “Weren't they?"

  "I don't think so. Buried by it, maybe. Killed, no. Not this guy."

  Owen looked down at the fragment in Gideon's hand, lips pursed. “That's a bullet hole? Is that what you're saying?"

  Gideon shook his head. “Too big. And if it was a bullet hole it'd be round and beveled, with the inside table of the bone sheared away. That's if it had been an entrance wound. If it was an exit wound...well, never mind. The fact is, this didn't come from a high-velocity projectile going either way. See here around the edges, how the bone has been crushed inward, not just blown away? See how the sides of the hole are conical, not straight? See this crack radiating—"

  "Well, what then?” Owen said impatiently. “Look, why does it have to be murder? Why couldn't it be from a falling rock or something? The guy was in an avalanche!"

  "You're wasting your time, Owen,” Julie told him pleasantly. “Believe me."

  "Somebody hit him in the head with something heavy,” Gideon said. “If this is the same guy whose mandible they found yesterday, he was cracked in the jaw first—hard. He fell, and then he was hit in the head—even harder."

  "Wait a minute, Gideon,” Julie said. “Just hold on there, Credibility is being strained here. How can you talk about sequence? How can you possibly say that he was hit in the jaw first?"

  "Jaw?” Owen was muttering. 'Jaw?"

  "I can't tell from looking at the bone,” Gideon said. “It's a matter of deduction, of reasonable inference."

  "Oh-oh,” Julie said to Owen. “Watch out now. Hang on to your wallet."

  "Nothing tricky,” Gideon said. He put his forefinger through the hole. It went in all the way to the knuckle without touching the edges. “I just can't see much point in cracking him in the jaw after someone put a hole like this in his head, can you?"

  She made a face. “Ugh, I see what you mean. Yes, I think you're right. As he usually is,” she said to Owen. “It's very annoying."

  "The hole is just anterior to the mastoid angle of the parietal...about here,” Gideon said, touching a point about an inch behind his own right ear.

  "Wait a minute, isn't that pretty low for getting hit over the head?” Owen asked. “And pretty far back?"

  "Not if you were hit from behind or—more likely—had collapsed onto your face after somebody'd just broken your jaw."

  "What jaw, dammit? That jawbone we found yesterday—somebody broke it?"

  "I'm afraid so. I wasn't positive, but it's looking more likely now."

  Owen expelled his breath and watched while Gideon replaced the fragment on the table. “Christ,” he said, staring at it, “that's awful. What would make a hole like that?"

  "Something heavy,” Gideon said. “And pointed."

  "Well, yeah, I guess so.” He looked suddenly at Gideon. “Christ, you don't think..."

  "I sure do, Owen. Where'd you put it?"

  Owen pulled the broken ice ax from a shelf under the counter and offered it to Gideon.

  "No, you hold it,” Gideon said. “Point-up. Prop it on the counter so it doesn't move."

  Owen grasped it firmly in both hands, where the splintered handle joined the head, and pressed the adze-shaped end against the counter top. The pick-like part was held upright and unmoving.

  Gideon turned the skull fragment so that the convex exterior side was down and lowered it steadily onto the point. The dull metal spike slid smoothly through the hole, millimeter by millimeter. When the bone was finally seated against it, the fit was snug and perfect, like a peg in a pegboard.

  Gideon let go of the fragment, which clung to the spike without even a wobble. Five inches of curving, pitted steel jutted evilly through the hole—and into the braincase, had there still been a braincase. The sight was riveting.

  "How horrible,” Julie said softly and looked away, out the small window over the counter.

  As they often were at moments like this, Gideon's feelings were mixed. On the one hand, he was pleased with himself. With nothing but highly ambiguous evidence to go on yesterday, he'd tentatively reached some manifestly unlikely conclusions about that mandible. His instincts, his experience, had told him something was very wrong. And now, apparently, it turned out that he'd been correct. And he'd quickly recognized this hole in the parietal for what it was too. Simple enough to do on a skeleton found in someone's basement; not so obvious in bones that had been through what these had gone through. Yes, he had reason to be satisfied with his work.

  On the other hand, his years of forensic activity had done little to harden him to the unfailing repulsiveness of murder, especially violent, bloody murder. When he was eleven his Uncle Jack had taken him to a wax museum, and Gideon, being a normal enough kid, had dragged his uncle into the chamber of horrors. The first tableau had been enough, a shockingly realistic recreation of a famous ax murder and bathtub dismember
ment. Gideon had stumbled out, white-faced and shaken, never to return.

  With time, he hadn't changed much, despite his decades-long fascination with bones (the older and drier the better). The sight of the spike piercing this fragile remnant of a young man's head made him want to look away too. His imagination was every bit as active as Julie's, and his knowledge of the human body greater. He knew how abundantly supplied with blood vessels the scalp was. He knew the consistency and color of living brain tissue. He knew...

  With both hands he lifted the fragment from the point and set it back on the paper towel.

  Owen put the ice ax down on its side and made a final try. “Look, couldn't the avalanche have knocked it out of his hands and driven it into...No, huh?"

  "Come on, Owen."

  The ranger sighed loudly, puffing out his brown cheeks. “Arthur's gonna have a fit."

  "What do we do now?” Gideon said. “Who has jurisdiction in a case like this, the FBI?"

  "Hell, no,” Owen said, bridling. “The NPS. Me."

  "You're going to investigate a murder?" Gideon winced even as he said it. But he would have been surprised if Owen had ever had to deal with a homicide before, let alone a twenty-nine-year-old homicide.

  "As chief ranger, I'm responsible for all law-enforcement matters at Glacier Bay,” Owen said frostily.

  "Fine,” Gideon said. “It's all yours. Where do we go from here? What do we do next?"

  Owen leaned stiffly back against the counter, then abruptly relaxed and grinned. “The next thing I do is get on the horn to the FBI in Juneau,” he said, “and ask them what the hell we do next."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 7

  * * * *

  For untold eons it had hung there, this huge mass of densely compressed ice nestling in a remote flank of the towering mountain range that would one day be known as the Fairweathers. Even when the Great Warming had set in fifteen thousand years before, it had managed to survive. But the immense ice field of which it had been a part had sagged, cracked, shrunk. Where slow, grinding seas of ice had flowed and carved out deep valleys, rivulets of water now trickled. Land that had lain frozen and barren since the beginning of time emerged at last. The mastodons came—and went—and then the wolves, and badgers, and bears. And still the nameless hanging glacier endured, remote and proud.

  The rich, distinctive voice of M. Audley Tremaine resonated, then seemed to float up toward the beams of the rustic A-frame ceiling twenty feet above. In the arched fieldstone fireplace of Glacier Bay Lodge's upstairs lounge a fragrant log fire snicked and crackled, a welcome counterpoint to the gray, raw afternoon visible through the floor-to-ceiling dormer windows. Six armchairs were drawn up to the hearth, their occupants in various postures of repose.

  Rather too much in the way of repose, Tremaine thought with mounting annoyance as he turned over the manuscript page. Lunch had been heavy and long—they hadn't finished until two—and the wine had flowed freely. Did these stuffed and slumbrous people have any idea what he was ordinarily paid to read aloud? Did they know how many millions of Americans tuned in every week to hang on every word? Perhaps he should talk to the manager about lightening the midday meal.

  Or perhaps he shouldn't. What did it matter if they were drowsy? If Walter was three-quarters asleep? In a way it was very much better. Certainly the afternoon was proceeding a great deal more smoothly than the morning, when he had been interrupted by one silly quibble after another, on everything from the financing of the La Perouse expedition of 1789 (Anna Henckel) to the dubious correctitude of terminal prepositions (the know-it-all Elliott Fisk). Since lunch, however, they had been logy and unresponsive, which was all to the good. These sessions were their opportunity to take issue with his book, and if they passed it up, that was the end of it. They had no recourse to further objection; so it said quite clearly in the agreement each of them had signed with Javelin Press.

  Now that he thought about it, maybe he ought to ask the manager about supplying wine with breakfast, too. He sipped from a glass of Perrier and continued.

  More time passed. The glacier-scoured furrow at the foot of the mountains was no longer choked with a barren, mile-thick mass of ice. In its place was a tranquil, surpassingly beautiful estuary of blue-green water studded with icebergs that had calved from the ends of the surrounding glacial tongues. Glacier Bay, the Europeans called it. Adventurers came to explore, and geologists to study, and, eventually, tourists to marvel from the decks of steam-powered excursion boats.

  And still the hanging glacier clung precipitously to its mountain aerie. Tlingit Ridge, the white man called this peak now. The long, twisting glacial tongues below had names too. Lamplugh, Tirku, Reid. But the hanging glacier itself, one of the last of its kind, isolated and dying, had no name and would never have a name. By the year 1960 of the Christian calendar its hold was finally loosening. Poised precariously over Tirku Glacier, it had shrunk to just four hundred million cubic meters.

  Only ninety million tons.

  He sat back with a sigh of contentment. “That,” he said, “is the end of chapter two.” And a damned fine ending it was, complete with masterful narrative hook. Not that any of these undiscriminating boobs would know a narrative hook if it bit them on the ear. “lf there are no questions I'll go directly—"

  He gritted his teeth at a barbaric yawp of a snore followed by several snuffles, all of this coming from Walter, who wriggled, rumbled, fussed, and then melted deeper into his chair, his head tipping backwards to the accompaniment of other, indescribable noises from his throat. For Walter, even sleep was a form of theater. Like a big dog he woke himself up with a snort, muttered and fussed some more, and settled into silence if not quite wakefulness. Reflections from the flames danced on his nose.

  Tremaine glowered briefly at him—at the others, too, for good measure—and read on:

  CHAPTER THREE.

  July 26, 1960, 12:04 P.M.

  In the United States Geological Survey Monitoring Station near Palmer, the needle of the seismograph stopped its gentle bobbing, hesitated, and then jerked sharply, scratching a series of spiky black lines onto the paper-covered drum.

  Ranger Parnell Morgan watched the needle intently, but soon relaxed. As things went in this part of the world it wasn't much of a tremor; 4.1 on the Richter scale. Not the big one they'd been worrying about, just another little jiggle in a part of the world that averaged four a day. There would be no frantic telephone calls on this one, no buckled roadways or twisted bridges, no collapsed buildings or broken water mains.

  The epicenter seemed to be somewhere in the Fair-weathers, in the uninhabited area north of Glacier Bay. A good place for it, he thought, and went back to the half-eaten tuna-fish sandwich on his desk.

  Tremaine looked up, distracted by an impatiently jiggling foot. “Is something wrong, Dr. Fisk?"

  Fisk stared back at him. “I was wondering,” he said, “just how necessary it is for us to sit through this nonessential material. Couldn't we—"

  "I would hardly call it nonessential, Doctor,” Tremaine said tightly.

  "What would you call it, essential? I mean, tuna-fish sandwiches, for God's sake. Tell us, was there mayonnaise on them? I can't stand the suspense."

  "Your point?” Tremaine said.

  Fisk gnashed his teeth, Or something very close to it. “My point is that we're here to supply personal perspectives, aren't we? Well, for God's sake, why can't we simply skip over the background information and get on with the story of the expedition?"

  Gerald Pratt took the pipe from his mouth and uttered his first words of the day. “Hear, hear,” he said pleasantly enough.

  "No,” Anna said firmly. “I wish to hear everything.” She turned her head stiffly to fix Tremaine with a meaningful glare.

  "Oh, me too,” Shirley said with that crooked, taunting smile. “I wouldn't want to miss a single, teeny word."

  "The question is moot,” Tremaine said grumpily. He hadn't liked that lo
ok of Anna's. “My understanding with Javelin requires that nothing be omitted...other than those events of which I and I alone have knowledge, of course."

  "Such as?” Anna said promptly.

  Tremaine ignored her. “Now, if I may continue? Thank you. What you've heard up to now has been essentially a setting of the stage, a preface. At this point the book shifts to a first-person narrative—my own voice, naturally—and the tragic personal story of the expedition per se begins.” He smiled thinly. “I trust Dr. Fisk will be pleased."

  He waited, but Fisk chose not to respond, staring mumpishly into the fire instead.

  Tremaine began to read again.

  Had I any inkling of the trouble to come, I would have chosen very differently from among my graduate students for the crew. But who could tell then that Jocelyn Yount's limpid blue eyes were windows to a wanton and amoral personality that would eventually create so much animosity and bitterness among us? The first sign—

  "Whoa,” Shirley said. “What was that again? About my sister's personality?"

  Tremaine paused briefly before answering. Here, of course, was where things would begin to get difficult. Once again he wondered uneasily just how good an idea this “co-opting process” was. There was a great deal to be said against it, in his view; not least that it had been thought up by a lawyer.

  "Miz Yount,” he said soothingly, understandingly, “I'm extremely sorry if this causes you distress, but surely you realize that I must be honest in my opinions, my perceptions.” He could, he reasoned, delete the “wanton” without any great loss, if necessary. He had been a little doubtful about it in the first place, truth to tell. But on the “amoral” he would stand firm. Literary integrity demanded it.

  "Well, yeah, sure,” Shirley said. “Nobody's saying you shouldn't be honest, but that just isn't true, what you said. My sister was something else; she was an angel on earth, a—"

  Anna barked a single note of laughter. “Some angel."

  Ah, good. He had Anna on his side on this one. As expected. His master plan for the week depended on playing them off against each other in different combinations.